Ending National Pay Rates

The only reason for this being introduced is to save money ie to reduce wages in already poor parts of the UK. So you will get poorly skilled teachers/docs etc in poor areas etc, exactly what you don't want.

You can see it already working in the private sector. Bradford is right next to Leeds. Wages in Leeds tend to be £1-2k higher than Bradford. Leeds attracts better skilled workers and more industry.

Tories relatively predictable. Broadly trends in public sector should mirror trends in private sector etc. Question, did they leak in order to soften actual news in budget?

Lib Dems hard to see. VC arguing that flexibility in public sector deals must make some sense. Did they leak though? Dangerous strategy if Osbourne ignores them and they then look even more impotent.

Labour face a tricky one. Having supported the notion before in government, Ed Balls, "of course, pay needs to reflect local circumstances."......One size National caps do not work in practice (same logic?)....But today, a different story!!!! Hmmmm?

Labour policy in government regarding public sector pay:

Uk gov pay policy based on three principles: (1) Affordability; (2) flexibility to set pay in line with regional economic and labour market conditions; (3) Performance.

That's very true bruneep. Staggeringly, Ed Miliband has even publicly announced that whilst he intends to oppose the government's spending cuts he has no intention to reverse them should he become PM after the next election. That level of honesty has never before been witnessed imo.

Tony Blair opposed every single privatisation carried out by Tory governments, without exception. But once he became PM one of the first things he decided was that the Tories hadn't privatised enough and he carried out his own privatisation programme. Only he never told us he was going to do that.

Likewise the Tories don't intend to reverse any of the fundamental things which New Labour did - in fact if anything, they intend to build on them.

And don't even mention the Liberal Democrats.

All of which goes to show that Britain isn't really that fundamentally different to a one party state.
Just a one party state which meets with the benign approval of the electorate.